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Thursday, December 04, 2008

Austin police face cuts but ignore obvious savings

The City of Austin is looking at budget cuts to public safety items, the Austin Statesman reports, including a proposed $4.7 million slashed from the police department. Predictably, police union officials "predict that response times would increase and that crime rates would surge as the result of further cuts." However, I still maintain the Austin Police Department, in particular, can save taxpayers quite a bit of money while actually increasing police coverage - for starters, by implementing the ideas discussed in this recent Grits post.

UPDATE: A commenter asked why no one was discussing the city auditor's critique on APD from last spring in the context of budget cuts. Good point! Here's a link to the auditor's full report.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I will be the first one waiting for the first lawsuit to be filed by a family member of an alarm company responder who is killed and the claim is made that if police had responded the death would have not occurred. Or the alarm company will be a party because they did not properly train the employee. Or how about an alarm company responder shooting the homeowner.

And while claims of these natures may be frivolous, it still cost you time and money to defend them.

While your point has merit, no matter what measures are taken to cust costs, it seems that no one can escape the liability exposure. And someone's cost is going to go up.

The alarm company's insurance rates most certainly will go up and they will have to provide more response training.

Do you propose armed or unarmed resonders? If I'm a responder, I'm not getting out of the car without a gun and backup. Imagine the liability for any business whose duties involve the use of firearms. And what are the costs for hiring additional responders to serve as backup units?

While police departments may save money by implementing verified reponse, the cost of service to do business as an alarm company will increase and those increases will be passed on to the customer, whether they be residential or business.

While police departments may save money by implementing verified reponse, the cost of service to do business as an alarm company will increase and those increases will be passed on to the customer, whether they be residential or business.

Well, since they're the ones with the alarm going off for no reason, or whose property is being taken if it's a legitimate alarm, isn't that where the expense belongs?

Do you want to continue to pay for my false alarms through your tax dollars?

These comments just highlight the reality that police don't prevent crime. The idea that budget cuts will increase crime is pretty thin when considered in light of the fact that police are responders rather than preventers.

It is far too easy to say that money spent on police budgets prevents crime when there is no way to validate that statement.

Police get paid a lot to keep crime statistics to justify ever increasing budgets. These very same statistics are then used to create fear in society that justifies more money to create more statistics.

The way to reduce crime is to decriminalize activities that harm no one!

"I will be the first one waiting for the first lawsuit to be filed by a family member of an alarm company responder who is killed and the claim is made that if police had responded the death would have not occurred"those lawsuits on a right to police protection were settled years ago. YOU have no right to police protection. Sorry, your on your own.

Some cities require a permit for the alarm and impose a fine for false alarms. That may be a direction.

You'll be waiting a long time. Police can't be sued for not showing up to a 911 call, especially an automated one.

I agree with 11:41 - I think the costs of alarm companies should be paid by those who receive the benefits, not foisted off on taxpayers. Those of us who don't have private alarm systems shouldn't have to pay for them, and increased costs to a private company for doing the job they're paid for is no skin off my nose. They've been heavily subsidized for way too long, to the detriment of both public safety and the city budget.

My daughter is a police officer in another Texas city. She says she is required to go by the homes of every registered sex offender on her beat every 90 days to verify all their information. It matters not if the offender violently raped his victim, molested young children, or as a young colege age man had a teenage girlfriend. Her time and the time and resources used by her department are exactly the same for all offenders no matter the circumstances. This is definitely a waste of taxpayer resources in many cases and affects the ability to place more attention on the most serious crimes and offenders.

and to 4:32, I echo Grits: VERY good question. They buried that report QUICK for a variety of reason: one is because they recommended a civilian oversight system with subpoena power; another is they didn't want the comparisons to other cities to be made a big deal of...those comparisons show we are on target with response to crime and that there is simply no basis for the 2 officers to 1000 residents ratio the union throws around as a baseline (a number based on no scientific study--many factors play into how many officers a City needs, it doesn't just boil down to a simple ratio).

But yes, the budget recommendations show there are some distinct upside down priorities and those have very much been ignored.

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